Color me skeptical about the buzz around "The Internet of Things." This is getting a lot of attention, because there is a lot of money to be made getting people to throw out their perfectly adequate $12 toaster and replacing it with a $60 WiFi-enabled toaster that you can control from your smartphone. But adding electronics to analog devices does not automatically make them a)more secure, or b)more reliable. The industry and government push to replace top-loading analog washers and dryers with energy-efficient front loading machines has had speed bumps, as the new machines have very expensive to replace electronics that don't always hold up well in a humid, wet environment. A mechanical control that cost twenty bucks has been replaced by a circuit board that costs $200.
And now let us consider this story, in which horrified parents discovered a complete stranger using their WiFi baby cam monitor to talk their child in the middle of the night. Cheap off the shelf WiFi chips and poorly tested network cards are being thrown into these devices as they are rushed to market, and few people are considering or can really even understand the security issues. It's a crazy world we are rushing into.